Long before Salim Ali - an Indian bird collector 1906-9

Hidden away in the annals of systematic ornithology is the name of P. N. Krishnasamy Naidoo, Merchant on Victoria Street, Mahe, Seychelles around 1907 and living on Rue La Fague, St. Andre, Reunion in 1908. From the Indian diaspora, literate in French, Naidoo probably moved from Mauritius but little is known about his life. It appears that he began to collect bird specimens on the Indian Ocean islands for Lord Walter Rothschild and his assistant Ernst Hartert. Almost nothing is known about him beyond the few letters he wrote that are preserved in the Natural History Museum at London and the bird specimens he collected which are now in the American Museum of Natural History.

Naidoo collected nearly 450 skins of birds all of which are now at the American Museum of Natural History, part of their acquisition from Lord Rothschild, who was forced to make a distress sale of his collections to silence an unknown woman blackmailer. Suprisingly all the Naidoo birds landed in the American part while the letters of Naidoo are at the Natural History Museum in London. Some of the beautifully handwritten letters in French sent by Naidoo to Rothschild and Hartert tell of large payments being made for the bird specimens that he collected. For some of the island parakeets, Rothschild offered 30 pounds per specimen. [Kemp (2017) on Rothschild in the New Scientist calls him a useless banker who spent a mountain of cash to buy nature]

As always, every finding raises more questions, how did Naidoo get to be trained in skinning birds and preparing specimens? What was his own knowledge of the birds of the Indian Ocean Islands? 

A collection of the specimens that Naidoo collected along with the species, dates and locations can be found from the American Museum of Natural History website. Examination of some of his letters at the NHM London archives has not revealed much on his life. 

A chapter remains to be written on this interesting marginal character in ornithological history.

Notes:

• Kemp, Christopher (2017). The financier who bought all of nature. New Scientist 3150:40-41.
  

Thanks are due to a number of people for helping unearth the precious little that we know about Naidoo - Robert Prys-Jones, Alison Harding, Kathryn Rooke, (NHM-London); Pat Matyot (who suggested that Naidoo may have come from a family of indentured labourers that left Mattur in Tamil Nadu to settle in Mauritius with some becoming successful entrepreneurs - like Govindasamy Krishnasamy Thambi Naidoo who financially supported Mahatma Gandhi); and Malavika Vyawahare (via Abhay Thakur, IFS).